Chapter 9: Holistic Dynamic Theory

1.) Focus on the Hierarchy of Needs towards Self Actualization

 Hierarchy of Needs- concept that assumes that lower level needs must
General Description be satisfied before higher level needs.

 Self-actualization – highest level of the hierarchy of needs where

whole person is constantly being motivated by one need or another
people.

2.) Represented by Abraham Maslow

 Abraham Maslow (1908-1969)
 Committed Atheist
 Born in Manhattan New York, Spent Childhood at Brooklyn
 Oldest child among seven children born to Samuel and Rose
Schilosky Maslow, Jewish Immigrants from Russia.

 Graduated from Boys high school, and briefly studies at City college of
New York and Cornell University.

 While attending City college he also enrolled in law school but quit
later on.
Biography of
Abraham Maslow
 After 3 semesters he transferred to cornel university but after just one
month in cornel he returned to the city college of New York

 Married Bertha Goodman, his first cousin. They have two daughters.

 He and Bertha moved to Wisconsin where he enrolled and received a

BA degree in Philosophy and there he become interested in
Psychology and work with Harry Harlow.

 In 1934, Maslow received doctorate degree, began the idea of self-

actualization and since he can’t find academic position he continued to
teach at Wisconsin for a short time and enrolled med school and like
law, he eventually dropped out.

 Following year, he returned to New York to become E.L. Thorndike’s

research assistant at Teachers College, Columbia University.
  In 1940s his health began to deteriorate.
 In 1946, at the age of 38 he suffered from strange illness that left him
weak, faint, and exhausted.
 In 1951, Maslow took a position as chairman of psychology
department at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. There
he began writing extensively in his journals.

 1960s is where become famous.

 In 1967- 1968, he suffered a severe but non-fatal heart attack,
received many honors including his election to the presidency of the
American Psychological Association.
 In June 8, 1970 he suddenly collapsed and died from massive heart
attack. He was 62. His Motivation and Personality was published in the
same year.
5 basic assumptions regarding motivation

1. Holistic approach – Whole person, not any single part or function is

motivated.

2. Motivation is complex- a person’s behavior may spring from several

separate motives.

Ex: Desire for sexual union may be motivated by needs for dominance,
companionship, love, and self-esteem.

3. People are continually motivated by one need or another.

View of Motivation Ex: When people are hungry, they will strive for food: but when they’re not
they move on to other needs such as safety, friendship, and self-worth.
(Structures and
Dynamics) 4. All people are motivated by the same basic needs

Ex: people in different cultures obtain food, build shelters, express friendship
and so forth may vary widely, but the fundamental needs for food, safety,
and friendship is common to the entire species.

5. Needs can be arranged on a hierarchy.

5 levels of basic Hierarchy of Needs

 These 5 needs are called conative needs meaning they have a

striving or motivational character.

 In order to move to higher level needs, lower needs must be or

relatively satisfied.
1.) Physiological Needs
- This is the most basic needs because everything comes
secondary until these needs is met. Includes food, water, oxygen,
maintenance of body temperature, and so on.

2 important respects

- The only needs that can be satisfied or even overly satisfied

Ex: After eating too much food, just the thought of it get you nauseated

- Physiological needs are their recurring nature, so we must seek

satisfaction every day.
Ex: After eating today, you’ll eat again tomorrow.

2.) Safety Needs

- Needs for safety and security including physical security, stability,

dependency, protection, and freedom from threatening forces such
as war, terrorism, illness, dear, anxiety, danger, chaos and natural
disaster.

- Cannot be overly satiated

3.) Love and Belongingness Needs

- Include needs for belonging, love, and affection.

- Both needs to give and receive

3 categories of love and belongingness

1.) People who had their love and belongingness needs adequately
satisfied from early years do not panic when denied love.

2.) People who never experience love and belongingness are incapable
of giving love. Learned to devalue love and to take its absence for granted.

3.) People who have received love and belongingness only in small
doses will be strongly motivated to seek and have stronger needs for
affection and acceptance.

4.) Esteem Needs

- Includes self-respect, confidence, competence, and the knowledge

that others hold them in high esteem.

2 levels of Esteem Need

1.) Reputation- perception of the prestige, recognition or fame a person

achieved in the eyes of others.

2.) Self- esteem- person’s own feelings of worth and confidence,

doesn’t
based on opinions of others.
5.) Self Actualization Needs

- The highest level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.

- Highly respect such values as truth, beauty, justice, and other B
values.
- Maintain their feelings of self esteem even when scorned, rejected,
and dismissed by other people.

- Not dependent on the satisfaction of either love or esteem needs.

- Not all people can achieve this level

3 other categories of needs

1.) Aesthetic Needs- is not universal. Motivation happens by the need for
beauty and aesthetically pleasing experience. People with strong aesthetic
needs, when this are not meet, they become sick when their conative needs
are frustrated.

2.) Cognitive Needs- the desire to know, solve mysteries, to understand and
to be curious. However, people who doesn’t satisfy this need can lead to
psychopathology.

3.) Neurotic needs- Non productive needs which perpetuate an unhealthy

style of life. Seen as compensatory reactions to a failure to fulfill one or more
basic needs.

General Discussion of Needs

 Maslow (1970) estimated that the hypothetical average person has his
or her needs satisfied to approximately these levels. The more a lower
level need is satisfied the greater the emergence of the next level
need. For example, if love needs are only 10% satisfied, then esteem
needs may not be active at all. But if love needs are 25% satisfied,
then esteem may emerge 5% as a need. If love is 75% satisfied, then
esteem may emerge 50%, and so on.

 Physiological 85%
 Safety 70%
 Love and belongingness 50%
 Esteem 40%
 Self-actualization 10%

Unmotivated, Expressive and Coping Behavior

1.) Unmotivated- Believed that even though all behaviors have a cause,
some behaviors are not motivated. Not all determinants are motives.

2.) Expressive- Frequently unconscious, an end in itself and serves no other

purpose than to be. Expressive behavior is usually unlearned, spontaneous,
and determined by forces within the person rather than by the environment.
 3.Coping- Ordinarily conscious, effortful, learned, and determined by external
environment and is always motivated by some deficit needs.

Instinctoid Nature of Needs

 Instinctoid needs - Innately determined even though they can be

modified by learning. Persistent and their satisfaction leads to
psychological health.

Ex: Sex, a basic psychological need but the manner in which it is expressed
depends on learning.

 Noninstinctoid Needs- Usually temporary and their satisfaction is not

a pre requisite for health.

Comparison of Higher and Lower Needs

Higher Needs

 Phylogenetic or Evolutionary Scale

 Needs to produce more happiness and more peak experiences.
 More subjectively desirable to those who experience both higher and
lower level needs.

Lower Needs

 Must be cared for in infants and children before higher level needs
become operative.

 Also produce pleasure but is usually temporary

Criteria for Self- Actualization

 Free from psychopathology
 Had progressed through the hierarchy of needs
 Experience love and had a well rooted sense of self- worth
 Embracing the B- Values
 Full use of exploitation of talents, capacities, potentialities, etc.
 Fulfilled their needs to grow, to develop, and to increasingly become
what they were capable of becoming.
Self-Actualization Value of Self- Actualizers
(Structures and
Dynamics)  Motivated by the eternal verities or what he called B”being” Values
 B Values are indicators of psychological health.
 B Values also called” metaneeds” to indicate that they are the
ultimate levels of needs.

 Metamotivation are the motives of self-actualizing people

Characteristics of Self- Actualizing People

 More efficient perception of reality- able to distinguish fact from
fiction. Less afraid and more comfortable with the unknown.
 Acceptance of Self, Others, and Nature – accept themselves the
way they are. Accept others and have no compulsive need to instruct,
inform, or convert. Do not expect perfection.

 Spontaneity, Simplicity, and Naturalness-they are unconventional

but not compulsively so; they are highly ethical but may appear
unethical or nonconforming. Unpretentious and not afraid or ashamed
to express joy, awe, elation, sorrow, anger, or other deeply felt
emotions.

 Problem- Centering- task-oriented and concerned with problems

outside themselves. Their occupation is not merely a means to
earning a living but a vocation, a calling, an end in itself.

 The need for privacy- have a quality of detachment that allows them
to be alone without being lonely.

 Autonomy-depend on themselves for growth even though at some

time in their past they had to have received love and security from
others. Do not live for the approval of others.

 Continued Freshness of Appreciation- capacity to appreciate again

and again.

 Can have peak experiences

 Gemeinschaftsgefühl or have social interest- had a kind of caring
attitude toward other people.

 Profound Interpersonal Relations- they only have few circles:

serious and deep connection.

 Have a Democratic Character Structure - friendly and considerate

with other people regardless of class, color, age, or gender. Have the
ability and desire to learn from anyone.

 Discrimination Between Means and Ends- have a clear sense of

right and wrong.

 Philosophical sense of humor- the humor of a self-actualizing

person is intrinsic to the situation rather than contrived; it is
spontaneous rather than planned.

 Creativeness-have a keen perception of truth, beauty, and reality.

 Resistance to Enculturation- have a sense of detachment from their
surroundings and are able to transcend a particular culture. Have their
own sense of right and wrong.

 Love, Sex, and Self-Actualization-capable of a deeper level of love,

believed that sex between two B-lovers often becomes a kind of
mystical experience.
  Maslow believed that neurosis and psychotic behavior arises from
need deficiencies.

 If Individual can’t satisfy their basic needs, pathology is the result

- Unsatisfied safety needs can result to “basic anxiety”
- Unsatisfied cognitive needs results in skepticism, disillusionment, and
cynicism.

 Neurotic needs lead to stagnation

 Deprivation of needs results in metapathology.
 Metapathology- absence of values, lack of fulfillment and loss
Pathology meaning of life. This could result to the following.

- Malnutrition
- Fatigue
- Loss of energy
- Obsession
- Paranoia

 The Jonah Complex- fear of success. Arises due to the need for
humility, and the emotional surge that fulfillment brings with us is too
draining to experience on a constant basis.

 Because Maslow believes that most people never progress beyond

the stage of satisfying needs for love and belongingness, he believes
that the therapist must develop an open, warm relationship with the
Psychotherapy client.

 Acceptance within clinical relationships will lead (hopefully) to more

healthy relationships outside of therapy.

 The aim of therapy is to decrease the reliance on others and

encourage the systemic urge towards psychological growth and self-
actualization.
 Little above average
 Self-actualization remains a popular topic with researchers
 On the criterion of falsifiability, we must rate Maslow’s theory low.
Researchers remained handicapped in their ability to falsify or confirm
Critique and Maslow’s means of identifying self-actualizing people.
Evaluation of
Maslow’s  Failed to provide an operational definition of self-actualization and a
Perspective full description of his sampling procedures, researchers cannot be
certain that they are replicating Maslow’s original study or that they are
identifying the same syndrome of self-actualization.

 Ranks high on the criterion of internal consistency.

 Overall, the theory is moderately parsimonious